When Matt first canvased his idea of wanting to create a big, cheap 3D printer, he was met with resistance. The two most common responses were;“you can’t make a 3D printer under $100 and you certainly can’t make a big one!” To that his response was “get stuffed”.

Over the course of the last few months Matt has prototyped a 5 cubic metre 3D printer made of three strings, an effector (printing head) and a small stepper motor.

To-date Matt has experimented with some materials, including an oil + flour + water mix, extruded through a syringe effector- however these have not proved particularly fruitful.

The next challenge according to Matt is “to get an effector that will do something useful!”

Staying true to his original purpose which was to use “a material that is recyclable and cheap” Matt has decided “to use paper” in order to “make paper sheets”.

At the moment accuracy is low and speed is low, but it works and is viable.

We will keenly follow Matt’s story as he takes his prototype to it’s next phase of development!

In the meantime you can follow Matt’s methodology at http://big3dprinter.weebly.com/what.html